Saturday, May 21, 2016

Russian Elite’s Anti-Americanism Older and More Deeply Held than that of Other Russians, New Study Finds

Paul
Goble

Staunton, May 21 – Members of the Russian
elite became anti-American sooner and are more committed to anti-Americanism
now than is the rest of the Russian population, according to a new survey
conducted by scholars from Hamilton College in the US and reported yesterday in
“Vedomosti.”

Moreover,
it says, elite support for “militarist and expansionist ideas … has
significantly grown” to 82.9 percent as has the share of those “who consider the
zone of the national interests of Russia extends beyond its borders.” And for
the first time, those who believe military force is the most important tool outnumber
those who think the country should rely on economic power.

Members
of the Russian elite, this and other surveys show, are less likely than ordinary
Russians to view the annexation of Crimea as a violation of international law
and more likely to accept the notion that “the main goal of the Russian
operation in Syria is the neutralization of the terrorist threat.”

The
Hamilton College survey this year also found that elites are “united around Vladimir
Putin and do not see a chance for his replacement in the next ten years.
Further, a sizeable share of them, more than in any of the earlier surveys this
college has made, say that the current Russian political system is “the best.”

A
major reason that the elites feel this way, the study and the paper suggest, is
that these views reflect ones they have long held and have promoted for the
rest of the population rather than being views that reflect the regime’s
propaganda efforts. The elites, Eduard Ponarin of the Higher School of
Economics says, are defining today’s “’party line.’”

“Their
worldview,” “Vedomosti” continues, “is the result of their earlier
disappointment that Russia did not become a full-fledged member of the world
community” after 1991, views that were intensified by the bombing of Kosovo in
1998 and only after that spread to the broader parts of the Russian population.

The
Moscow paper cites Denis Volkov of the Levada center on why the
anti-Americanism of the elites has spread so quickly to the rest of the Russian
population: “the weak differentiation of the Russian elite and negative
selection (loyalty instead of competence)” mean that the two are less different
than one might expect.

At
the same time, however, “Vedomosti” suggests, members of the elite are more
likely to feel that expressions of support for an anti-American position are “a
ritual of confirming their loyalty to the political regime” even though the
majority of them “sincerely share these convictions” and their support for
Putin has grown as he has realized their program.

But,
the Moscow paper concludes, “these attitudes are leading the country into an
economic dead end, and that is obvious for the elites as well. The inability to
solve domestic problems is the main threat for Russia, according to this
survey; in second place and much lower down is terrorism.”